It’s funny how, with the benefit of hindsight, suddenly everything becomes clear. What do I mean?

When Google removed the ads on the right hand side and subsequently, reduced the number of ad spots from 10 to 7, many people were a little confused as to why Google did this. I mean, it was no doubt, the biggest change to AdWords in the last decade. And many people were left speculating as to what their big picture strategy was.

But as it turns out, it wasn’t the only biggest change.

Enter Google most recent rollout – Expanded Text Ads!

And now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see why they removed the ads on the right column – to make space for the expanded text ads! Google have explicitly said their move is driven by wanting to optimise for mobile, since we do live in a mobile world.

So, for those of you who are unacquainted, expanded text ads now give you about twice the amount (47 percent to be exact) of available text in your ad.

What Do Expanded Text Ads Look Like?

You can see the new format below:

As you can see, there are now 2 headlines, each of 35 characters. And an 80 character description line. And you can also see that the Display URL path is also different.

Results From The New Ad Format?

As soon as the new ads hit our client account, we jumped on them. And let me say this, I like what I see.

We are seeing an increase in CTR across all accounts, and this may be because not everyone has jumped on board and it is also probably not fully rolled out.

Be sure to preview what your new ad looks like (in the ad preview on the right) as sometimes we see that the ads can get cut off a little in Headline 2. So, make sure that you don’t want to have an embarrassing or unintentional word show up, purely due to the cut-off point.

See below:

Oh, and don’t forget to still incorporate ad extensions into your account.

So, go ahead and start implementing the new ad format and I hope you also get the nice boost in CTR that we are seeing too. Good luck!